The damn birds

This morning, March 19, 2013, I woke up really missing my Dad.  In learning to live with grief, I’ve mostly come to accept that is going to happen from time to time without delving too deeply into why now, why today type of questions?  It wasn’t close to any milestone events.  I did note it was my niece’s birthday, so I think about family a little more on such days.  Other, more significant days have passed without such an emotional response.  Then I wondered if it had something to do with being at a vestry meeting last night, a common experience the two of us now share.  It is something I wish I could talk to him about.  When I got to the daily office and it was the feast of St. Joseph, something clicked. It struck me that it would make sense to feel that loss of my own father on a day when we are celebrating Jesus’s father or stepfather depending on one’s perspective. I decided breathe and explore this a little further.

            When my Mom was moving to a smaller unit in her life care community in 2011, she need to downsize and asked my brother and I to select some items of my Dad’s for our own homes.  I had wanted my Dad’s toy circus wagon, a Hudson River oil painting, and a print of Cranmoor farm.  (Cranmoor farm in Toms River, NJ was the property that became both the ground for the church in which I was raised and the country club where I spent my childhood summers).  On the morning I was set to leave, my Mom asked me about six Mark Catesby bird prints. (Catesby was a naturalist who travelled in the colonies and draw birds and fauna, considered a forerunner to Audubon).  Although valuable, she was having difficulty with the idea of sending them to auction.  I wasn’t sure I wanted them, but unlike my brother, I did have space to hang them in unadorned hallway. 

            My Mom had made me promise that if I took the prints, I would hang them. Not too long after I returned home, I had some friends over to help me get them on the wall and properly aligned.  I was surprised to learn that one of the six prints was in a smaller frame then the others.  It was so uncharacteristic of my German; love for order, cleanliness is next to Godliness, father to have tolerated that.  I even remember as a kid when he had the prints sent out to be cleaned and re-matted, so am particularly curious as to why the discrepancy. My mother was unable to shed light on the mystery.  Nor did she even recall that one was smaller.  I don’t know that they had been hung as a group since being in the dining room of the house I lived in until I was 11 or so.  I suspect my Dad had done what I did, have the smaller one strategically located over a light switch.

            Once the prints were decorating my hallway, my fondness and attachment to them grew.  Although I had lived in the house for 12 years without them, I almost couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t there.  I also learned that I spent more time walking from my office to the bathroom or kitchen then I knew.  Some days I would linger in the bathroom, phone in hand, so I could look at them longer while listening to people babble on some or the other conference call. I affectionately referred to them as the damn birds. I would describe my relationship with them as passive, but they were always there.  Perhaps, somewhere in my psyche, it reassured me my father was still around too.

About a year later, I began to consider purchasing a new home; where I would put the damn birds became a factor in my decision-making.  I was selecting an open concept home with no hall.  The seller suggested the sunroom as an option, but my knowledge of archival preservation was still intact enough to want to keep old prints away from that much light.  Then I discovered the basement option added a beautiful hall with a French door opening into the basement.  It even had a light switch in just the right place.  I was sold.  I even bought a book of the prints, so I could have bookstand at the end of the hall and have almost an exhibit type space.  I symbolically hung the birds on the third anniversary of my Dad’s death. It looked beautiful.

As I settled into my new home, I began to miss the constant presence of the birds.  Sure the Hudson River oil painting is prominently located over the fireplace, but that painting was more about the kind of art I like to have around; the tranquility of the water scene.  I liked the table with the circus wagon and other artifacts that represent a blending of my father’s circus things and my own animal mementos, but even with his picture, that display has never carried the same connection I feel with the birds.  The Cranmoor farm piece was really my mother’s print.  Since I had invested so much in creating this sacred space for the birds, I was loathe to move them.  With the exception of less than daily trips to the basement, seeing the birds requires an intentional visit.  I hope that does not reflect a change in my psyche about my father’s presence.

I wonder about Jesus and his earthly father, whom we don’t very much about.  Did he grief Joseph’s passing?  Matthew 12:46-50, does not leave me with the impression has family of origin concerned him.  Yet it is hard to imagine a loving, compassionate deity in human form not experiencing grief over the loss of someone who had a profound impact on shaping his life.

I was raised with the church as a big part of my life and the life of my family.  Both my parents served in the church community in different ways and ensured, sometimes to my chagrin, which my brother and I participated as well.  I never really knew the extent of my Dad’s faith, like did he have it, or did he think going to church was something you were supposed to do.  Not very long ago it dawned on me he must of have had great faith to face his death with kind of courage he displayed.  A recent death in my own church community has provoked some of my own thinking about my mortality. I only hope I can face my own death with that kind of courage.  I hope that my own fears of being alone with no one to care for me, physically or emotionally, will be replaced with an ability to lean into my faith and trust God to provide.  I also need to start to live life now with the same kind of courage.  It seems as appropriate time as any to begin a blog I have long considered writing, entitled longing and belonging.

As I have welled up with tears a number of times while writing this, I reminded of my Dad’s final speech to my family… We are going to do with this grace and remember no blubbering.  My mother later claimed he may have said that, but we never agreed to it.